David Hughes is the Daily Telegraph's chief leader writer. He has been covering British politics for 30 years.

Hilary Benn the hunting humbug

Poor Hilary Benn has reached the barrel's bottom and is scraping hard. Our near-anonymous Environment Secretary can find nothing better to do with his time than re-open the hunting issue. I appreciate there's an election on the horizon and he's anxious shore up Labour's core support, but he could at least try not to be quite so infantile in the process. Take this assertion in his letter to David Cameron urging the Tory leader not to try to repeal the five-year old ban: "It is also very hard to see why this would be a priority for an incoming government." Just savour the humbug in that remark. Here is a member of a government that devoted 700 hours of precious Parliamentary time to the hunting ban – far more than was ever devoted to such trivial issues as the state of the economy, the war in Iraq or the threat posed by terrorism. And he has the brass neck to warn the Tories not to make it a priority. Isn't it also the case that by writing in these terms, Benn is effectively conceding that the Tores are on course to form the next government? That's not very smart, is it? But then Benn isn't. A few years back he was being spoken of as a future Labour leader (see Chris Mullin's excellent diaries) which just goes to show how low some people set the bar.